


Sit and Stay

by notabadday



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4484747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz and Simmons get a puppy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sit and Stay

When she finds him, he’s lying on his side halfway down the bed, his arms folded to provide him with a pillow. His hair has fluffed up against the comforter on one side.

  Jemma climbs onto the mattress to lie next to him, her body lying parallel to his, and she waits to see if he’ll react. Fitz doesn’t wake. She edges closer, gently lifting his elbow to slide inside of his limp embrace before dropping his arm around her. She places a hand on his waist before moving it down to affectionately stroke his thigh. She hears a drowsy moan escape him.

 They are so close that the thick wool of their sweaters, matching shades of pale grey, gives away no line of separation to distinguish one from the other.

 Fitz's eyes remain closed but she feels him move his hand to her head, affectionately stroking the flat of her hair and knocking her messy bun a little, loosening its hold. She sighs, the cosy warmth of their closeness stirring a feeling of tremendous contentment. They are soft and snug and safe, and if she could live inside one moment, she thinks this one wouldn’t be so bad.  

 Not wanting to breathe in a mouthful of fluff from both of their sweaters, she inhales through her nose. He smells good, fresh mint on his breath and a hint of her apple body wash on his skin. She decides she’ll wait till later to tell him off.

 Jemma slides her knee up the side of his leg, prompting him, at last, to open his eyes with a sleepy smile. The look he gives her is typically awestruck; it’s that same look that finds her across crowded rooms, catches her by surprise every morning, wraps her up in _home_ at the end of every day. She blushes, smiling coyly under his tender gaze, and it’s a flashback to the same moment, the endless echo of the exact same moment that emerges in the smallness of every day: he looks at her the only way he knows how, and she knows, until next time, just how loved she is.

 "There you are," she whispers playfully, as though discovering him somewhere he shouldn't be.

 He scrunches his nose a little in lieu of a smile. "Here I am," he replies with a dry throat.

 "I was gonna make lunch." She sweeps her hand through his hair, overgrown and irresistibly fuzzy, brushing a curl away from his face and watching it bounce back.

 "Sorry, I fell asleep."

 "I think it's sexy," she says, leaning ever so slightly forward to give him a reiterative peck on the lips. "Waking up all hours of the night because you're worried about the little one."

 "She only has a tiny bladder, Jemma. I don't want Monkey to have to sleep in her pee."

 "Less sexy." It’s a lie. The day before, when Fitz discovered that their beloved new dog had had an accident during the night, forcing her to sleep with the product of said accident in her little bed, he immediately rushed to run her a bath. Jemma watched as he stood in the bath with the puppy, worried she would feel stranded without him, knowing the comfort his feet give her. He scooped little handfuls of water up and poured them over Monkey’s back until she was clean. And when they were done in the bath, Jemma scooped her up in an oversized towel, cradling the puppy in it so that only her face poked out of the fabric for Fitz to pet.

 The following night, he woke up in the middle of the night worried that she will do it again. Not once or twice, but three times. Each time, he took her out into their little garden and waited until she had done her business.  

 "Is she okay? Have you been with her while I was asleep?"

 "She's absolutely fine, Fitz." Jemma moves her hand to hold his cheek. "I've been teaching her some tricks. I think we were starting to master 'sit' and 'stay'," she boasts. "And she didn't follow me into the loo earlier, which is a marked improvement."

 Fitz looks at her, not afraid to stare anymore. He holds his gaze, unapologetic and full of admiration. Another moment, the same moment.

 When she says it - "I love you." – it is light. She can conceal the intensity of feeling, protect them from the heavy burden that it carries. So, she says it often, she says it carelessly. It slips out instead of thank yous and goodbyes and goodnights. She says it because she doesn't know if, when she looks at him, she can do what he does and say what he can with just a glance.

 When she says it, it's not because he needs to hear it. His eyes say, "I know." If he's secure in anything, it is, at last, Jemma's love. 

 He doesn't say it back. He doesn't say it as much as she does. It's in every look, every gesture, every word. He spent too long unable to say it, forced to redirect the feeling into everything _but_ those words, and now it's stuck there, in everything he does, and to say it would be surplus.

 He kisses her with feeling, rolling them both a little so that he is hovering above her. When they come apart, she looks up at him and she doesn't know, doesn't have the faintest idea, what it does to him. There's sleep in his eyes so she gently reaches her little finger to the inner corner of each eye and wipes it away.

 He looks at her lips like he's thinking about kissing them again but stops himself, suddenly distracted.

 "I miss her," he says, wincing.

 "The dog?"

 "I miss the dog." He looks at Jemma for reassurance, or forgiveness.

 "She's just downstairs, Fitz," she replies, attempting to either curtail any puppy yearning Fitz is experiencing or to enable the reunion.

 "Yeah," he concedes. Then he reconsiders. "Yeah. I think I'm just gonna-"

 "Yeah, I think you are too," she says, laughing. Her bun drops as she sits up, and she begins absently retying it as she follows Fitz downstairs.

 As soon as Fitz walks into the puppy’s view, Jemma hears her yelp with joy. She’s in a fit of glee at the sight of him, and Jemma gets it. Monkey runs around his feet, making figures of eight between his legs and licking his toes whenever she pauses for breath. Watching them together, Jemma understands why Fitz wanted a puppy – or a monkey – for so long, and she knows, without ever having to ask Fitz, that it’s worth the wait. He looks more relaxed than she’s ever seen him.

 He dodges the excitable puppy at his feet as he bends to sit on the floor with her but loses his balance, only slightly by accident, lying flat long enough for the dog to jump up onto his neck and start covering his face with little licks. Monkey runs over his chest while he’s still horizontal, shedding black fur against Fitz’s woollen sweater, a little less grey than it was two minutes earlier, before eventually settling against his neck, her small body tucked up underneath Fitz’s chin.

 Watching Fitz and Monkey, Jemma realizes they’re a family. She sees the next ten years or more stretched out in front of them: Fitz shoehorning the dog into their wedding someway somehow, Monkey growing big enough to jump up to the dinner table to steal food when they’re not paying attention, the dog sitting in front of a crib, fiercely guarding it against any potential intruders and waiting for the adults to take the daytime shift, watching children play in the garden with that lovely ball of black fluff, long walks hand-in-hand with Fitz. It forms in her mind like the most beautiful vision of hope, domesticity and, yes, she thinks, _family_.

 In the mess of all of it, in between days of perilous fieldwork and groundbreaking experiments, in amongst all of the relentless extraordinary, she has found something so beautifully ordinary: a home and a family.


End file.
